RANGOON, Burma “ While most of the world focuses on the Middle East, a deadly duel is taking place in this neglected corner of the globe. The military junta here hangs on to power by using rape as a weapon and children as young as 11 as soldiers.

The best hope for getting the world's attention still rests with one woman – Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi. Though many may recognize her unusual name (awn-sawn-sue-chee) and photogenic face, they may not realize that the situation in Burma is more troubling than ever.

The problem is not merely that the regime has ignored the elections that should have put Aung San Suu Kyi and her party into office. The problem is that the ruling generals are looting the countryside and ravaging ethnic peoples who oppose them.

These horrors never make the news in Burma because the government controls the two newspapers and two TV stations. The country's leading journalist is confined in the notorious Insein Prison in Rangoon.

A visiting United Nations envoy, trying to investigate the human rights abuses, abruptly suspended his mission last month after discovering his confidential interviews with political prisoners were bugged. The infuriated envoy, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro of Brazil, left the country.

Even getting to talk face to face with Aung San Suu Kyi about the dangerous standoff is not easy. The military dictatorship watches her constantly. She is barred from using the Internet. Her telephone is tapped and service is frequently cut off.

I used veiled e-mails and letters sent through third parties for a year to set up our meeting. And since the regime rarely grants visas for journalists to speak to her, I bicycled around the country on a tourist visa. Other than the 104-degree heat, it turned out to be a good way to meet everyday people. I learned that they are trapped like her – but they are too scared to speak out.

What the generals have created in Burma is a steamy "Potemkin village." There is a modern facade of plush new hotels with cable TV and mini-bars for outsiders. The small number of tourists who come may see only the glittering gold tops of the 12th century Buddhist temples and be impressed with how pleasant the people are. As one visitor observed, they are the "most charming oppressed people in the world." And, no doubt about it, this is a beautiful, unique country, where the men wear skirts and paddle boats gracefully with their feet. In the bamboo villages, women weave silks, on ancient looms, that New York designers would envy.

But there is a parallel universe of misery and corruption. Malnutrition, AIDS and drug dealing are reaching alarming rates. Burma supplies more than 60 percent of the heroin that is sold in New York City. An estimated 40 percent of the children are malnourished. Roughly one in 50 adults has HIV – and the World Health Organization says the country's health system is the second worst in the world (ahead of Sierra Leone).

Though my visit was brief, I saw citizens who are coerced into hard labor building roads with their bare hands. I saw children working in conditions that OSHA would condemn. I was on flights that were delayed for a half-day because military officers had grabbed the commercial plane to use for themselves. Almost everyone I talked to knew someone who had been imprisoned or harmed by the military.

One middle-aged man in Bagan, the site of thousands of historic temples, described how the government had ordered everyone in his neighborhood to move their homes within 30 days so the houses wouldn't clutter the view for tourists. He wrote a letter to protest one morning. That same night, soldiers threw him in prison for four months. The man was so thin that he looked like a bundle of sticks and knees on his bicycle, so when he said he had lost weight in prison, it was hard to imagine. It turned out that the site where the government relocated the people was in a flood plain; their houses were swept away.

I also met a young man who saw several of his best friends killed during the student revolts of 1988. He pointed to one of the ubiquitous billboards proclaiming "The People's Desire." It warned citizens to beware of "external elements" and "foreign stooges," an unsubtle swipe at Aung San Suu Kyi.

The former student scoffed bitterly, "The people's desire! The people's desire is for the government to leave them alone. The government's desire is that the people suffer."

The last day of my trip, I managed to get past the guards who block all the streets around Aung San Suu Kyi's home in Rangoon. Resting on lounge chairs by their barricades, the soldiers looked like extras from a Sylvestor Stallone movie with their wraparound sunglasses, shoulder-slung assault weapons and green camouflage uniforms. Just taking a photo of them can get you 20 years in prison. Interviewing Aung San Suu Kyi can get you thrown out of the country or barred from returning.

It was worth the effort. If anything, the story that Ms. Suu Kyi has struggled to tell the world for years has become even more desperate and bloody than she can convey with her proper, Oxford-accented pleas.

Although the military government claimed to have released her from house arrest last May, she is still followed and harassed. For all practical purposes, Ms. Suu Kyi is still confined – only now in a bigger cage, a beautiful prison the size of Texas.

She agreed to the interview even though some urgent problems had come up that day. Despite those pressures, she was welcoming and offered to pour tea. At 57, she has a delicate look and carries herself with dignified grace.

Yet when she speaks, it is with the no-nonsense determination of a "La Pasionara," trying to wake up the world to what is really going on.

She got right to the point: "When I was released, the government made a series of promises. It has not yet kept them.

"The government promised that it would begin discussions about the transition to democracy. They have not. They promised they would release all the political prisoners. They have not," she said. There are still about 1,400 political prisoners, including members of Parliament.

And they promised independent newspapers would be started, she said, adding with a wry smile, "You haven't seen one, have you?" She applied for a newspaper license immediately after her release, she said, "and it has not been approved yet."

Government leaders deny they are dragging their feet, but also try to play down Ms. Suu Kyi's role in the process, claiming that "she is just a housewife" and of no consequence. (Unless you count her election as prime minister.) Behind the scenes, they try to thwart her every move.

Last fall, when she traveled to one province, she discovered a deserted town square. No one dared show up because of government threats. She announced she was going to a town in the Shan province – and secretly switched directions. She was greeted by thousands of cheering supporters, wearing the red and white of the National League of Democracy, her political party.

Less than two months ago, when she traveled to the largely Muslim Rakhine State, a brave crowd of 25,000 assembled to greet her. Though the gathering was peaceful, local authorities brought in police with batons and a fire engine to intimidate the crowd. Ms. Suu Kyi asked the fire captain to move the truck; he refused. She climbed on top of the truck and began her speech.

Was she afraid? "No," she answered briskly. But she was concerned that the government now compels civic organizations such as the Burmese Red Cross and Fire Brigade to physically threaten people. And she is deeply troubled by reports about the thousands of women and girls who have been raped by soldiers, apparently to subjugate protest in provinces where there is still resistance.

"These allegations must be taken very seriously as a violation of human rights," she said. "The soldiers must be held accountable. We must protect the most vulnerable among us, women and children. It is the government that must be held responsible for this violence."

Likewise, the government must be held responsible for the economic problems, she said. Burma once was one of the richest countries in Asia with great assets of teak forests, rubies, oil. Yet today it is one of the poorest. Once it was the leading producer of rice in the world. Today it must import rice. Just a few weeks before my visit, the government seized most of the private bank accounts in the country. That meant many families lost all their savings.

"It is an ongoing crisis," Ms. Suu Kyi said. But she said she still strongly supports international sanctions as the only way to force the military to open the country.

Would it help to call for a UN-led force to supervise elections, as was done in Cambodia? She shook her head. "More violence is not the answer." She said her conscience as a Buddhist requires her to keep calling for a negotiated transition to democracy and reconciliation.

Several times she returned to the point that the world community needs to encourage the regime to "sit down and talk peaceably. Once they do that, we will be able to work out our problems quite speedily."

What message does she want most to get out? "The crying need to democratize our country," she said. "We are in serious economic trouble. Our political and social problems are considerable. Yet all our problems stem from bad governance. We can't do anything about the appalling social and economic problems until we do something about the government."

Outside voices are beginning to join Ms. Suu Kyi's pleas:

• The Martus Human Rights software system is being used by the Burma Project and other organizations to document reports from refugees. Ethnic villagers are being trained to collect evidence of abuses that could be used in a war crimes tribunal. Those who survive and make it across the border tell of children being used as "human mine sweepers" and ethnic villagers forced to serve as porters for the army who are shot when they falter.

• The International Labor Organization has a representative on site who is documenting the use of thousands of coerced laborers to build hotels, roads and a new billion-dollar oil pipeline.

• Groups such as Human Rights Education Institute of Burma and Earth Rights International are assessing the thousands of refugees pouring across the border into Bangladesh and Thailand. They tell of whole villages being burned and plundered by an army machine that must steal to get the supplies it needs to keep operating.

The pattern that is emerging is a government-sanctioned policy of targeting people for abuse because of their religion (especially in heavily Christian and Muslim provinces), their ethnicity or their gender. The stories of villagers being lined up to be shot are similar to the stories that once filtered out of Bosnia, Cambodia and Rwanda.

"They are sophisticated about it in the sense that they do not line the people up and shoot them. They have other ways of doing what turns out to be the same thing," said Josef Silverstein, professor in Asian studies at Princeton University.

"The assaults of women among the minority populations is one of the greatest crimes being perpetrated in the world, with the slavery that emerges as a result. These girls often are sold and misused after they are raped. They acquire AIDS because they have no idea how to protect themselves in those circumstances. Then they are sent home to die and infect the neighbors," he said last week.

The U.S. State Department recently was able to corroborate reports that rape was being used on a large scale as a weapon, with victims as young as 5. The Shan Human Rights Foundation and the Shan Women's Action Network have documented gang rapes in which 25 percent of the victims were killed afterward and the abduction of women to serve as sex slaves in barracks.

"All the victims under 15 appeared severely traumatized by their experiences, were disturbed mentally and spoke in whispers if at all," the State Department said.

The Burma government, officially called the State Peace and Development Council, vehemently disavows any policies of rape or child soldiers. Human Rights Watch contends the county has the largest child army in the world, with 70,000 youths under 18 serving in the force of 350,000. According to the New York-based human rights group, some child-soldiers are drugged with amphetamines and whiskey to keep them fighting. Some have been ordered to shoot villagers in rebellious ethnic areas. One boy who was coerced into the military was beaten until all his skin was bloody. An officer rubbed salt into his flayed skin. He screamed in pain for hours, then died.

It is that kind of escalating abuse that is causing Ms. Suu Kyi to risk speaking out despite government efforts to box her in, discredit her and wait her out. She recently took her appeal to Radio Free Asia. She perseveres, she said, out of a sense of family duty. Her father, Aung San, is generally considered the father of the democracy movement in Burma. He was assassinated on her second birthday.

Some international observers worry privately that too much has been made of Aung San Suu Kyi as the "Saint Joan" of Burma. They suggest that the military is growing more entrenched with each generation, creating a huge military successor class by providing better health care and schools only for their own families. Perhaps it is time to try to work with them rather than against them, proponents of engagement say. But the majority of voices in the U.S. State Department and international relief community side with "The Lady," saying stronger international leverage remains the best approach.

The only booming business in Burma is drug-dealing, say those who study the country. Burma is second only to Afghanistan in producing opium and heroin and has been flooding Southeast Asia with methamphetamines. Drug lords are seen playing golf with military officials and hold high positions in the banking industry, according to western diplomats. One notorious drug leader, Khun Sa, has been granted the concession for the country's main toll road.

One in four citizens is believed to spy for the dreaded military intelligence known as MI, so most people are guarded in their comments about the government. If you ask how they feel about Ms. Suu Kyi in public, they are likely to look around anxiously, give a vague answer or change the subject. But privately, when no one else can hear, they will pull you aside and whisper, "We love her. We love The Lady."

Despite that affection, some western observers worry that Ms. Suu Kyi may be losing touch with the younger generation of students, who have been dispersed by the military from large city universities to far-flung "distance learning centers." Several young people, who worked at two jobs to try to get by, told me that they are aware, from their rare glimpses at television and the Internet, that "we are behind, so we have to work hard." They said they admire Ms. Suu Kyi, but they have begun to despair whether she can liberate them.

Some help may be on the way from the United States this spring. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, an outspoken critic of the Burma regime, is working on a tougher package of sanctions to introduce. The prestigious Council on Foreign Relations will release a special task force report on the worsening Burma situation. And the Bush administration has been signaling the regime that tougher sanctions are coming soon if they do not begin serious discussions with Ms. Suu Kyi and the National League of Democracy.

The excuse for inaction that the Burma regime has only brutalized its own people may not last. According to a November report in the respected Foreign Affairs quarterly, the Burma generals have purchased MiG fighter aircraft from Russia and are seeking Russian help in building a nuclear reactor.

E-mail rpederson@dallasnews.com